The best way to assess
fertility might be to measure “cycle viability,” or the chance of
getting pregnant if a couple has sex on the most fertile day of the
woman’s cycle. Studies based on cycle viability use a prospective rather
than retrospective design—monitoring couples as they attempt to get
pregnant instead of asking couples to recall how long it took them to
get pregnant or how long they tried. Cycle-viability studies also
eliminate the need to account for older couples’ less active sex lives.
David Dunson’s analysis revealed that intercourse two days before
ovulation resulted in pregnancy 29 percent of the time for
35-to-39-year-old women, compared with about 42 percent for
27-to-29-year-olds. So, by this measure, fertility falls by about a
third from a woman’s late 20s to her late 30s. However, a
35-to-39-year-old’s fertility two days before ovulation was the same as a
19-to-26-year-old’s fertility three days before ovulation: according to
Dunson’s data, older couples who time sex just one day better than
younger ones will effectively eliminate the age difference.

Don’t these numbers contradict the statistics you sometimes see in the
popular press that only 20 percent of 30-year-old women and 5 percent of
40-year-old women get pregnant per cycle? They do, but no journal
article I could locate contained these numbers, and none of the experts I
contacted could tell me what data set they were based on. The American
Society for Reproductive Medicine’s guide provides no citation for these
statistics; when I contacted the association’s press office asking
where they came from, a representative said they were simplified for a
popular audience, and did not provide a specific citation.

She is a biochemist and realized that tons of foods that are gluten free still have glutamate in them. Glutamate is processed by your body into MSG...so if you have an MSG sensitivity you need to watch out for these other ingredients. Of course this stuff is not labeled...the video of her going through the store reading labels really got me:http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=7jJj9W4uF_4

Oh and she mentions that there is a pesticide that they use on conventional crops made of MSG!! And they don't have to label it...so
really go organic.

5.14.2013

I went there today after searching for a product on line. The Sears website told me that the item, a bookshelf, I wanted was in stock. So we drive out to the Sears. And guess what? THEY DON'T HAVE THE PRODUCT.

Seriously, Sears just needs to die. I told the woman helping me to look for a new job, because surely Eddie Lampert was not going to keep wasting his money on this store.

Basically if you ask doctors what end of life care they want, they only want pain control. Full stop.

2. http://humanfoodproject.com/from-meat-to-microbes-to-main-street-is-it-time-to-trade-in-your-george-foreman-grill/Last
week I told you guys about how the bacteria in your gut can potentially
cause heart disease. Well, there is a VERY in depth analysis of the
research that last week's article was based on. Good stuff here. One of
the best scientific critiques I have read in a long long time.

Two great articles about apples. These come out every few years, but still worth a read. And then itreminds me that there is only one variety of banana, and if that goes, well then we will lose the idiom "going bananas."

4.08.2013

Here is a list of podcasts I love...I would love to hear if you guys have any you want to share.

1. 99% Invisible: this podcast is about the invisible infrastructure all around us. It is short and does

not come out all of the time, but when it shows up, I listen.

http://99percentinvisible.org/

2. Radiolab: This one is all about science...and other interesting stuff. If you already listen to podcasts, you know radiolab. If you don't, START HERE.http://www.radiolab.org/

3. On The Media: This podcast can get a bit snarky and inside the media, but really really great reporting and another one I have not missed in years.http://www.onthemedia.org/

4. To the Best of Our Knowledge: I am not sure what this podcast is about. It usually features a big theme and interviews with authors about books related to the big theme. Sometimes it has a religious bent, which I find interesting.http://www.ttbook.org/

http://www.newyorker.com/reporting/2013/03/11/130311fa_fact_kolbertThis
one is about sleep...or lack there of. Basically a group of book
reviews, there are some interesting nuggets in there. For example,
couplessleep better apart. A LOT BETTER. I can buy that. And there is a nugget about a naked Ben Franklin in the article too, Keith...

3.04.2013

new
diet out of england...look to see more about it. eat all week and then
fast saturday and sunday. interesting. a good friend's brother did the
reverse of this: fast all week and eat whatever on the
weekends...worked. i would like to see more about how this impacts your
bodies' bugs...of course. i have a good friend who has had good results
fasting...feeling better...so maybe post-baby...

This was interesting. Working out will make
you hungry, but if you keep working out overtime, your body will
compensate. It takes 3 months, so stick with it.

3. http://www.psmag.com/magazines/pacific-standard-cover-story/joe-henrich-weird-ultimatum-game-shaking-up-psychology-economics-53135/Ok,
this article reminded me of an article a friend sent around last year
about how the mice we use in all of our scientific testing are all
creating false results. Similarlly, psychologists have thought that the
western brain was the "normal" brain, while the rest of the world's
brains were strange. Take China. There the nail that sticks out gets the
hammer. Here, the squeeky wheel gets the grease. So, we thought most of
the world felt that sticking out and being an individual was the best
way of thinking. Well most of the world thinks like the Chinese. This
has implications for lots of science and really how we view and interact
with the world. Excellent article. Hat tip to Keith.

3. http://www.radiolab.org/blogs/radiolab-blog/2013/jan/15/bitter-end/This
is a podcast about what care doctors choose at the end of their own
lives v. what the average person would choose. Doctors only want pain
medication. Full stop. The rest of the stuff: CPR, chemo, etc., just
makes the last days of your life miserable. Worth a listen and ponder.

4. Spirit Guide, http://www.newyorker.com/reporting/2013/02/11/130211fa_fact_sanneh.The
first problem with the New Yorker is that it comes every week. The
second problem is that even the articles you think you can skip turn out
to be fascinating. Take whisky. I don't care about whisky or that it
lacks an 'e' if Scottish. But there I was reading along. But again, don't expect a solid ending.

5. Antarctica, by Gabrielle WalkerThis
book was interesting...but there were a few mind blowing nuggets.
First, there is a single celled organism below Antarctica that shoots
way above its weight. It can eat other multicelled organisms.
Foraminifera. They might even be able to walk. SINGLE CELLED. Seriously.
We continue to revise Darwin...And then there are some other little
guys down there who live in the driest place on Earth called
Tardigrades. "They grow up to a millimeter long, making the adults just
barely visible to the naked eye. They are stubby and cute with four
pairs of fat little legs, a vole-like snout, and a complexion of a gummy
bear." Apparently no matter what you do to them they just don't die.
And when things get too bad they swap out their body's water for sugar
and can hibernate for decades. AWESOME.I can send this
book to you if you want it. Just email me.

2.05.2013

Some spouses are crazy and taking the quantified self-movement
too far...tracking their spouses eating, sleeping, and even pooping.

“Christine, a 20-something New Yorker who asked to be
identified by her first name, had plans to move in with her boyfriend, and the
couple spent every minute outside of work searching for a new apartment -- or
so Christine thought. She logged into the Kindle account they shared to read an
e-book she and her boyfriend had started in tandem, only to discover he’d
plowed several hundred pages ahead, while she was still just two chapters in.”

Three year old gets arthritis. Doctors prescribe steroids.
They don't work. Mom tries alternative stuff like Omega-3 pills, probiotics, some leaky gut
stuff (which turns out to be a real issue), and waits 6 weeks. Kid gets worse.
Then on the 7th day of the 6th week, kid wakes up and can
walk again. Remission. The article also talks about a topic I am into: fecal
transplants. This is a topic de jour as people learn how important bacteria are
for our bodies. Actually, we are bacteria vectors, no individuals.Well written
and you really cheer for this mom.

Cute article about how people in Germany follow the rules
and how one town put in round abouts which turns out to make people drive
better. Fewer accidents. Interesting, as they put in a round about in my hometown
of Kalispell that every one hates. I would like to see the numbers. From a book
by James C. Scott, Two Cheers for Anarchism.

This one was super interesting about a strange code from the
1700s. The pictures are very interesting and the history of secret societies
that is included is fascinating. The article falls down at the end a bit, but
ending stories, or anything is difficult, so don’t let that stop you from reading
the article.

1.25.2013

After years in the banking industry in Nevada, Lattin moved
to Kalispell in 1971 as a vice president at Conrad National Bank (later First
Interstate Bank). Eventually he became president of the bank. He also served as
president of the Kalispell Chamber of Commerce and was chairman of the
Kalispell Art Show and Auction for three years. He was especially proud of the
bank’s sponsorship of the Men’s U.S. National Downhill Championships at Big
Mountain in 1982.

He began a new career as an investment executive at D.A.
Davidson in Kalispell in 1984. Soon thereafter he was diagnosed with liver
failure. He received a new liver in 1987 and was grateful for the support the
Kalispell community gave him and the trust fund set up to help defray his
medical costs.

Unable to work, he retired in Kalispell but kept busy
through a longstanding commitment to the Republican Party in Flathead County. Lattin
served as president of the Pachyderm Club in the early 1990s and was a longtime
finance chairman for the Flathead Republican Central Committee. He was also
involved in campaigns for the U.S. House by Ron Marlenee and Rick Hill. In 2006
received a special award from the Flathead County Republican Central Committee
in recognition of his work.

In 2008 Lattin moved to Portland to be closer to his son.

He is survived by two sons, Dr. Brandon Hayes-Lattin
(Courtney Hayes-Lattin) of Portland and Brent Lattin (Nicole Harkin) of
Washington, D.C.; three grandchildren; and his brother, Frank Lattin (Donna
Lattin), of Las Vegas, Nevada.

In lieu of flowers, the family requests that donations be
made to the United Network for Organ Sharing, www.unos.org, in memory of Harry
Lattin.

12.19.2012

Learning historically was the goal of schooling: kids went
to school to learn about the world and foster an interest in our world. Is that
true? Or has school always been about socialization of our children to follow
the leader, and do what they are told?

I think that the most important thing that a child can learn
is how to think on their own; how to reason complicated things through and come
to a logical conclusion. We won’t be around forever, and they need these
abilities.

Schools today are largely teaching to tests. So today’s
children are going to school 1) to be socialized and 2) to learn to rote-ly regurgitate
the information for tests.

I consider homeschooling because I don’t want Oskar to learn
either of these things, necessarily. Of course there is value in learning how
to get along or ahead in the systems of our society. But that is not what I
think school should be about.

I want Oskar to keep his innate interest in the world fully
intact. I want him to always be interested in learning new things and trying
new things. I want him to have the opportunity to keep learning more about a
topic he is interested in.

My 6th grade class in Georgia, had this VERY
progressive education plan which fully integrated all of the subjects around
one major subject: Humpback Whales. Music: we learned about whale songs. Math:
we leaned about waves and how to calculate the waves made by the whale songs.
English: we learned facts about whales and wrote about these. Spelling: Our vocabulary
was all about whales. Science: more whales. It was so much fun. I loved it. And
this really helped me see all of the connections in the world, something I
still see today.

I want Oskar to have the chance to explore the world through
school, not learn that life is shit and you just have to memorize stuff and get
through...to what? Life is today. Getting through is not enough. I want him to
regularly enjoy the wonder of our world. And 35 hour a week at school might
just kill the wonder in him.

11.05.2012

Sorry for the radio silence folks. I took a great weekend course on photoshop and blogging last weekend and want to share one thing I made!

Oskar...crawling! He walks now though...

The Blogshop girls have quite a following and people flew in from Chicago and New York to attend the class. I heard about it from a friend of a friend who took the class in LA. Whitney is now their intern. Met lots of fun people and that was great. It was also great to meet two women entrepreneurs clearly doing what they love. Inspiration.

10.10.2012

9.25.2012

The Lifespan of a Fact, by John D'Agata, author. Jim Fingal, fact-checker.

I heard about this book from a podcast out of Wisconsin, TTBOOK. Listen to the interview if you have a few minutes. But
you might be wondering what this has to do with bureauphiles. Well,
lots of our government's time, and energy, all joking aside, is spent
checking facts before government publications are published. As an
intelligence analyst I spent days double and triple checking reports
before they were "sent forward" for review and action upon my
recommendations.But working at GAO is where I spent the most time checking facts. All words in GAO reports have been fact-checked. What Lifespan of a Fact
distills so clearly is the back and forth regarding facts. A friend
once spent hours trying to find original support for the assertion that
the F-22 is the Raptor...hours. I spent time citing the Periodic Table
of Elements to prove that Na was indeed sodium.

The flip side of this
obsessive compulsive checking is that the information is reliable.
What
is somewhat disappointing about the book is that it is apparently some
kind of meta commentary on the nature of fact checking. The book itself,
while publicized as nonfiction, is actually fiction.

So check out
the book if you want to read some entertaining, yet apparently not
entirely factual, insanity...and pull your hair out a bit.

9.21.2012

She gets a bit philosophical at times, but overall, this is one of the best cookbooks I have ever read. Less recipes, and more home cooking theory, if you will, we have already started implementing a lot of Adler's ideas into our kitchen. For instance, we now have "spread night." You basically make pestos out of whatever you have in your fridge with olive oil and walnuts (we used pistachios last night) in your handy chopper. Have someone bring home a fresh baguette and call it dinner.

She also instructs the reader to shop and then cook immediately all of your veggies, so you have them ready at hand to put into other meals, such as omelets or soups or pasta. This saves you time on the other end. We have done this for a few weeks now with great success. We are eating better and cheaper, at home.

Fun quote:
"Children must shell peas. In a world of things too big, getting peas from pods is a chance for pea-sized people to exercise authority. Always told to put things back where they found them, here, children have it right. Pea shelling goes only in one direction: dig, disperse, and never look back." pg. 53

This book is so good, I am going to buy it. (I got it from the library...)

9.10.2012

I have been spending some amount of my time blogging over at www.bureauphile.com. I need to spend more time there. For those inclined we are posting information and topics of interest to people interested in government.

We are also looking for guest posters...so if you are interested, drop me a line!